Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday October 16, 2013 @04:08AM
from the it-wasn't-for-Jif dept.

New submitter mjone13 writes "Dave Feldman, in a blog posts, says that the problem Android faces is giving consumers too much choice. He cites several studies which state that consumers generally are unhappier when they have too much choice. 'Catering to all individual preferences creates a bloated, bland product. Not to mention a UI that’s impossible to navigate. Furthermore, people are notoriously bad at identifying what we want. And what we do want is influenced heavily by what we know — our expectations are constrained by our experience.' He then goes on to talk about Android fragmentation, app developer problems and bug issues. Finally he says the people who general prefer the choice Android provides are tinkers similar to gear heads who love tinkering with their car. 'I think many who extol Android’s flexibility fall into the tinkerer category, including some tech bloggers. They love all the ways they can customize their phones, not because they’re seeking some perfect setup, but because they can swap in a new launcher every week. That’s fun for them; but they’ve made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us.' Is choice really a problem for Android?"
Whether it's a problem depends on what the goals are. Providing a satisfying experience to a bunch of tinkerers is a very different thing from providing a satisfying experience to the multitude of non-tinkerers who buy smartphones.

You can have a highly customizable UI without making the default bland and impossible to navigate. Having more customization does make some things more difficult, since you can't assume all users will have the same setup, but it's still compatible with a decent default interface.

It's not the users that are the problem its the dev teams because if you're writing for Apple you only need to test on few handsets & tablets. However, if you're writing for Android you need to test on fucking hundreds of different hand sets because each manufacturer has fucked with the OS. So either apps don't get written for android or if they do they normally get approx 100th the testing apps get on Apple.

Isn't this just some random communist kook anyways? The "anti-choice" guy? Some people will just go to any lengths to try and justify their consumerist fixation while ignoring the actual state of the market (many markets actually) in the process.

A lot depends on who and what you are targeting. If eyeballs and advertising is what you after supporting Android is a must. But if you are after in-app purchases as your revenue model, it's iOS you want.

I've been developing mobile apps since 2009. Early on I was making as much off ad revenue vs app purchases, but by last year the ad revenue went in the crapper. So much so that I stopped releasing updates for android. By that time Android accounted for a little over 60% of the installs. It accounted for less than 15% of my revenues. Android accounted for over 90% of my complaints and requests for support because someone with a cheap pay-as-you-go android phone would run into a problem on a device I didn't even know existed. I was making at most a couple thousand a month from the apps, mostly from iOS users. It was enough that it paid my basic living expenses like rent & utilities meaning my day job work could go into savings. But it wasn't enough for me to go out and buy every freaking handset on the market at $600 a pop.

Now on the professional day job part of the world we usually price for iOS first and includes QA for current generation and usually the previous 2 generations before that. Right now if you paid us to write an app, we'd ensure compatibility with the iPhone 4, 4s, 5 & iPad 2, Retina, Mini. Next month it will likely be 5S/C, 5, 4S & iPad Retina, Mini, + whatever is announced next week.

For Android we will test against Nexus Phone & Tablet and certify QA with those devices only and it costs our clients about 1.5xiOS. Why? Because we know we'll be answering "QA for XYZ handset was not covered in the contract" a few times. So we build it into the price of the contract. We do offer QA for additional handsets & tablets @ $5,000 per Android handset/tablet. Most of our clients will maybe ask for QA against the latest Samsung Galaxy devices and that's it. Only one that I can think of asked for Samsung & Motorola because the boss man had a motorola phone.

When Android first started we tried to QA against as many handsets as we could and we were losing money on those contracts. When Google released their official devices we decided, even though nobody used them in the mass market, those would be what we'd test against. That was the "official" devices for compatibility. What handset makers & carriers did beyond that we'd have to charge extra to fix because we'd run into the same model android phone would have odd quirks between different carriers sometimes.

Why is everyone talking like there even is a problem? In August Android had almost 80% of the market [techcrunch.com]. Yeah, it must be incredibly boring and horrible to use if so many people want it.

Yet Apple's profit was greater than the other's combined; with Samsung a close second in terms of profitability. It's really just a two horse race with Apple vs. Samsung; so in that sense as long as Samsung maintains a consistent UI and feature set the "too many choices" argument is not relevant. It's shaping up a lot like the PC market did - Apple has it's own proprietary offering; the PC has MS-DOS but each implementation is customized often to the point of a lack of compatibility until IBM essentially se

As far as I know Android has a standard as well. You use Java for hardware compatibility and C++ for speed. Most apps run on all modern versions of Android devices. MIPS processors are the only exception that I can think of. Does every app run on every iOS device? No, because of difference between the devices.

The best analogy I can come up with are trading card games.

* The card game Apple only sells their game in pre-built decks. Everything is same so everyone can play the same game. If you change the deck the wrong way (mods and unofficial add-ons) you may not play with the other kids.

* The card game Android sells everything in booster packs. You get more variety and can pick up cheap decks of discarded cards. But the cheap decks may have old cards from previous game version that are not compatible with way most people play the game. Or you have someone who decided to make their own cards which don't completely follow the core rules. More fun to play for certain people but doesn't work with the game as a whole (we're looking at you Kindle).

By the same metric: 1) Windows Server is absolutely killing Linux in the server market2) IIS is absolutely trouncing Apache in the web server market3) Visual Studio is the only winner in IDEs etc.4) ???5) Profit

Which provides evidence on how overpriced Apple products are, and how many idiots will pay far too much to get nothing extra in return.

Overpriced is in the eye of the beholder. Apple clearly provides enough value for their customers to be willing to pay Apple's price. If they didn't find more value in Apple's offerings than its competitors Apple wouldn't be in the position it us today. It also shows that Apple is probably much better at managing supply chain cost to maintain profit margins.

Apple's target consumer is the same consumer who pays more to buy the brand name milk cause they think it tastes better. Having worked as a teenager in a milk plant, I can tell you that the only difference is that they change the label on the carton.

Bullshit. I buy apple devices because if/when they break, i walk into an apple store, say "this is broken" and they give me a new device and i get on with my day. I don't get the "make the user play troubleshooting technician" bullshit, i hand the broken device over, and they hand me a working one.

Customer service like that IS NOT FREE. Yes, the devices cost more for lesser on paper spec. I don't care. I'm not paying for some on paper spec, I'm paying for a supported device.

That's not my experience. My ipad got image retention on the LCD (happens when looking at a web page for 15 minutes) and Apple suggested I try wiping the ipad to factory state. Not one of their "geniuses" told me this, but several. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that image retention isn't a software issue.

I can get one from t-mobile for the same or less than a Samsung S-4. I agree you can't do as much. I wrote a little Android program (Shameless Plug [google.com]) that pops up a contact's picture (sadly the cute girl in the screenshots is a stock pic from the Creative Common's main image site) and keeps it there because I got tired of not noticing the itty bitty missed call notification. It's only pretty recently that I could distribute it to others on the iPhone without jumping through a _lot_ of hoops.

I tried android for a couple of weeks to see what I was missing. I asked all my android owning friends "OK, what should I check out that I can not do on my iPhone". About the only useful response I got was wifi scanning tools. That was it. Which i don't use my phone for anyway.

I tried android for a couple of weeks to see what I was missing. I asked all my android owning friends "OK, what should I check out that I can not do on my iPhone". About the only useful response I got was wifi scanning tools. That was it. Which i don't use my phone for anyway.

Then your friends either aren't very smart, or are simply happy with their stock Android and have never wanted to change it.

Homescreen widgets, a decently-sized screen, NFC file sharing, third party keyboards (or a physical one [bestbuy.com] if you prefer), custom launchers [google.com], completely customizable app icon placement (including whitespace where you want whitespace), ability to add a huge micro sd card to double your storage size (or swap it if you're bored with the media on this card and want something different for a road trip), ability to add and remove arbitrary files directly to/from the phone over cable without having to use iTunez spyware to do so, ability to go to pretty much any store and pick up a replacement charger/data cable for $5, support for a pointy stylus (on some models) instead of trying to use a marshmallow-on-the-end-of-a-stick capacitive stylus, etc., etc., etc.

Not to mention being able to take a video in any orientation and have it display correctly (i.e., not rotated 90 degrees [apple.com]) on any system...but from your comments, I'm guessing you partake of the entire apple pie, so you may not have seen this particular defect before if you only view your vids in your phone or on your Mac or via your Apple TV box. Oh, I didn't even know this one: apparently you can't email anything but a photo or video [csmonitor.com] using the stock iPhone email app...huh. Guess you'll have to use the GMail account for business stuff, then...other Android advantages such as haptic feedback are pretty 'meh' for me, as I just turn them off anyway.

Looks like Apple is finally allowing homescreen widgets (?er, maybe? looks like you still need to buy an app [lifehacker.com]?), so that's *one* thing off the list...once developers catch up and start providing more widget types, that is.

All that without having to root or 'jailbreak' the phone. If you root it, sky's the limit. True, most of the things you can do if you root the phone are things that your average Joe won't care much about (custom ROM's, complete bit-wise phone backups, ability to software-switch more system settings, ability to remove the stock apps instead of just disabling them, etc.), but to the tinkerer, they are delightful:)

Went to a presentation on a project that's released its web tool as an app (iSpot [ispot.org.uk] - a nature spotting community tool). the project leaders said that at the point they decided to develop an Android app version, they asked the technical team to identify how many different versions/configurations of Android were out there that they'd need to make sure the code presented well on, to ensure a good user experience for all (you really don't need your first reviews on Google Play to say it sucks on their device in their preferred configuration). Apparently the technical team identified 123 versions/configurations of Android (approximately early 2012).

The project leader said this makes it a nightmare to test for a small development team (about 4 employees on the project). I am not sure what the solution is but it sounds like it causes them a lot of pain and requires a lot of management to ensure the majority of users get an equitable and positive experience of the app.

I think if they decided on some minimum requirements such as Android 4, then they'd only really have to deal with differing screen sizes, since there are already APIs to handle finding your current location for example. There probably still are a lot of Android 2 devices out there, but you have to draw the line somewhere. They could start off making a decent Android 4 app, and then port it back to older versions if they're worried about compatibility issues.

That 80% market share hasn't translated into more profits for app developers, or more apps being available for Android than the iPhone. The fact that a lot of cheap phones happen to run Android doesn't mean that the people who own those phones are buying apps.

It's the Xbox/PS3 vs. Wii argument. Sure the Wii outsold the Xbox and PS3, and judged by that metric alone, it clearly "won" the previous console generation. Yet where were all the good games and developer effort going? They were going into the Xbox and PS3 because developers quickly realized that the people buying all those Wii's WEREN'T buying games. So, while more Wii's were out there, they were sitting in closets gathering dust while the PS3 or Xbox was hooked up to the TV and being used. And that's what defines the REAL winner in the end.

I didn't say anything about apps, I was just talking about Android adoption.

I don't think most people are leaving their phones away in cupboards. They use them every day. Licensed Android devices already have most of the stuff you need built-in, and then most of the apps that people like to use are free. Think Kindle, Instagram, FB Messenger, Spotify, Chrome, that kind of thing.

I'm not sure why app adoption matters so much to you, unless you're a developer. The "real winner" is the person who gets to use a

Apparently anecdotal evidence is now data. Everyone I see has an iPhone. Does my anecdotal evidence trump yours?

By the Rules of the Internet Arguments, no, because he gave his anecdotal evidence first. You must one up his evidence to trump his. In general it goes with things lower of the following list as trumping the things above:

Some versions of the Rules of Internet Arguments allow for authoritative statements when the person making the statement either has professional or academic experience in the field being discussed that sometimes trumps the same level of statement.

So, really to trump the previous statement you would at least either need to claim some sort of professional or academic authority in the field of cell phone purchases, or support your statement with a web link.

I do development for ios and android. 85% of our downloads are on apple, 15% on android. We are a small shop so we are not going to go out and buy every device to test it on. Generally our apps are ok with most android devices, but there will always be one specific type of device that the app will crash on because it does something a little differently.

Not to mention all of the different versions, you have people running everything from 2.1 to the latest version. For our app on android 63% are running 4.0.3+, however 31% are running 2.3 so we can't abandon 2.x yet. With iOS you generally only care about previous version. So currently target for 6.1 or higher, if you REALLY want to squeeze out every last download stat you can, aim for 5.1 (since ipad 1 can't upgrade to ios 6)http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ I find these statistics fairly accurate. Since we don't use any ios6 features we target 5.1+.

One of my cousins is a product manager at a medium sized mobile gaming company, he said they have a similar experience to ours. Their games download stats are about 10-20% android rest iOS, yet they spend 3x the resources on android support as they have about 90 devices laying around to test on, and people always calling up because "it runs slow on this device", "it crashes on this device". They completely killed android development except for their top couple apps

You realize what you are saying is equivalent to saying a new windows app needs to be test on every version of windows, and on every machine combination, right?

As the main build guy at a small software company, I can attest that this is necessary.

We run automated testing on XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. As far as "every machine combination," yes and no. If your software is built for 32 and 64 bit systems, you need to test XP32, XP64, Vista32, Vista64, Win7-32, Win7-64, etc.

We also run on Linux and test on every distribution we support. Here, it's mainly glibc differences that cause the breaks. We build to the lowest common denominator, and you'd be surprised how often something works fine on RHEL4 but is broken on RHEL6 due to library differences.

We have seen lots of issues from the same code that are only reproducible on one version of Windows or one version of Linux.

If you're doing it seriously, test seriously or your product will suffer.

Being the cheapest in the market usually gets you the most market share. That doesn't mean people *want* to use it.

Ironically *expensive* features like high resolution; large screens and waterproofing is why android is 80% of the market, The iphones low cost low resolution; small screen water adverse with massive mark-up is why its profitable but unpopular.

It's not the users that are the problem its the dev teams because if you're writing for Apple you only need to test on few handsets & tablets. However, if you're writing for Android you need to test on fucking hundreds of different hand sets because each manufacturer has fucked with the OS. So either apps don't get written for android or if they do they normally get approx 100th the testing apps get on Apple.

Except if you were actually a developer working in the real life world (I am, on an app with 2 million daily active users) you'll know that that is not at all necessary. There are device-specific bugs, but they're rare, and in the most part we rotate testing on about 6 devices, and use bug reporting libraries to catch the rest. Our crash-rate is a tenth of the iOS team's crash-rate.

then your iOS team sucks as you only need to test on at most 3 or 4 devices (depending on what version your are building for) We test against 3 devices. iPhone 4 running 5.1, And iPhone and iPad running 7. We will run through other versions quickly using the simulator to see if there is anything obvious, but we haven't found any bugs that werent present on the device testing.

I do know it isnt necessary for android to test against every device, like you we only test against maybe 2 devices and then let crash reports catch the rest, but the issue is if there is a crash report for a device, and the crash isn't painfully obvious and research doesn't turn up what the issue is, then you might be forced to go out and pick up the device.

It's not the users that are the problem its the dev teams because if you're writing for Apple you only need to test on few handsets & tablets. However, if you're writing for Android you need to test on fucking hundreds of different hand sets because each manufacturer has fucked with the OS. So either apps don't get written for android or if they do they normally get approx 100th the testing apps get on Apple.

Except if you were actually a developer working in the real life world (I am, on an app with 2 million daily active users) you'll know that that is not at all necessary. There are device-specific bugs, but they're rare, and in the most part we rotate testing on about 6 devices, and use bug reporting libraries to catch the rest. Our crash-rate is a tenth of the iOS team's crash-rate.

Then, to be perfectly honest, your iOS team sucks.

I've worked on a lot of dual platform projects and recently launched my own Android app. We've definitely found plenty of device specific issues (one app I work on deals with cameras, which is a giant device specific rabbit hole on Android.) We use Nexus devices, we code things the right, Google recommended way, and things still break. On the app I just released, I had a custom keyboard (that comes on many Android devices) cause problems because it was simpl

"Dave Feldman is a product designer with a background in user experience, product management, and front-end development. Heâ(TM)s the co-founder and chief product officer of Emu. Heâ(TM)s held positions at Yahoo! and AOL. Check out his website Operation Project and follow him on Twitter @dfeldman."

aka mr. "I configured my configurable system to act like crap and by the way I love iPhone".

now, of course if I can make a plugin to handle file saving.. then of course I can install a dozen apps to do it. just because I install two different homescreens for example doesn't mean that I have to choose between the two each time I press home.. I could though, if I wanted.

basically the answer to his problems is to not install extra apps. I don't know what the fuck is his actual suggestion on how to remove the problem of choice. maybe he is working on his own android variant where you can't install anything... more likely he is trying to troll some buzz and score a new gig. that's what his writing looks like. only made more obvious by him submitting these pieces on different blogs to gather maximum buzz since nobody gives a shit about his blog and the product he is promoting(emu.is, some kind of sms frontend where you can attach your position easily. how novel, for 2003).

and the other problems? android phones are so BIG! well fuck buy a smaller android phone.

(oh and he doesn't really seem to understand android multitasking, only sort of).

I've always found iOS much more of a pain to navigate, because of the lack of the "back" button. I mean it's not like it's even a new idea - everyone uses one already in their web browsers.

I don't see how the apps list vs desktop is any different to having a desktop plus a start menu (plus a quick launch bar).. maybe it would be confusing for someone that's come from iOS, or hasn't taken a few minutes to explore their device or read a quickstart guide.

To be fair, Android is harder to navigate. There are desktop pages (similar to IOS app pages). Then there's a list of apps under the apps button. You can also copy stuff from the apps list to the desktop list.I find this paradigm very confusing. I've seen Android users get confused on this too.But, I desperately miss configurability in IOS. Absence of settings has my life very hard in the past... So has the conduit called iTunes. iTunes really sucks when it doesn't work properly, and is clunky when it does work.

Itunes is a nightmare that should have been burned with fire, on Android you do not have this extra layer of complexity at getting content onto your devices.

You talk about reconfigurability and settings...or the absence of them. Ignoring the irony of arguing for additional complexity at the cost of customisability, or that Apple copied the look of this with iOS 7 from Android, you argue that having a desktop(sic) that you can only add applications to is better than one you can add widgets to.

Doesn't the trend of "cutting the cable" partly stem from having too many channels to choose from? When my dad recently considered buying a television (they haven't bought one in 15 years) the choices are bewildering and even the terminology befuddles him -- and he was one of RCA's first television installers and service-men back in 1948. I have never had cable T.V. and when I tried to find the local PBS channel on a friend's set, channel 7 isn't on channel 7 and there's a bazillion buttons on six remotes,

The trend of "cutting the cable" has more to do with the fact that with all of those channels, there is still nothing worth watching most of the time. Most of the channels are barely distinguishable from each other and all show similar crap. Even channels that were supposed to be different have become the same as everything else (MTV cut back on music, Syfi cut back on science fiction etc). And that's on top of the fact that anything I find worth watching tends to be on when I would rather be doing somet

"theyâ(TM)ve made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us"

I think we understand all too well the rest of you, who don't care about anything. The problem is: we don't care about you. There, you have it. We don't want a device that's dumbed, locked, tailored to noob-level, without a way to customize it. We have a lot of examples for such designs, and they are all too idiotically dumb. You want "simple"? Find one that is dumb enough for you, but do not try to ru

The great thing about Android is that you could make a UI that is as simple as you want. Remove the app drawer and dock, drop five or six direct-dial contact shortcuts onto the homescreen. There; You have a very pretty, very expensive, very overpowered dumbphone. Want to dial more numbers? Replace your homescreen contacts with one giant shortcut to the dialer app. You need never look at the Google Play Store, GMail, or Wireless Settings apps again.

Ignoring the fact that Android has something like 85% market share so consumers are obviously not unhappy, how is this different to Apple? Android and Apple steal so many ideas from each other that the differences are now mostly cosmetic.

As for the large choice in phones, isn't this is like saying motorists have too many kinds of cars to choose from?

As for the large choice in phones, isn't this is like saying motorists have too many kinds of cars to choose from?

For a while, each Android phone's physical buttons (back, home, menu, search) were in different places on the bottom row. It's as if not all cars had the accelerator on the right and brake in the middle.

Seriously that is all I see in this article. Flaming for the sake of clicks/views. Android fragmentation was a problem back in the version 1.5~2.1 days. Back when OEMs were experimenting and the software was maturing. Nowadays, save for a handful of tweaks, all decent Androids devices are pretty much equal. As for the UI tools, maybe not having tons of options will make that guy happy, but removing them will make a lot more people angry. What does he want? A Google branded iPhone?

Even though I subscribe to the Apple/BlackBerry/GameConsole idea of one optimal OS for one or two device types, I'm still mostly a windows and android user. Trying to make everybody happy with the "one OS for them all" strategy is just impossible plus there are many marketing and development problems associated to it for platform providers, OEMs, developers and users. However to say that the Android(and by extension windows) experiences are crap, is pure BS. Like it or not, Android gets the job done, and the experience is without a doubt what I would call very reasonable . At least that is from my experience with Galaxy and Xperia phones as well as a Transformer Tablet. If you got a $0 chinese phone with a shitty firmware that is your problem, not Android.
Sure if I could get my way, each company would have it's own OS and ecosystem, assuming that all tech companies had a interesting and unique vision for themselves. Too bad that is just unrealistic plus there are plenty of practical problems associated to this philosophy as well, but that is a discussion for another time.

Except Android phones are fliphones; projectors; remote controls; FM radios or transmitters; Consoles with Real Controls; or conputers with full keyboards and trackball Fingerprint readers; at all price ranges; made everywhere around the world...including America. With different screen sizes/ Dimensions Battery Life; even with extra smart paper screen; dual screen; or curved screen. Including extras from dual sims...even triple sim slots to sd readers and full sized USB

Android offers choice only to tinkerers. Everybody else simply walks in a store and buys a phone that looks shiny. iPhones are having a bit of a problem in that they offer almost a single choice which was the same as that from a few years ago. You can't have a bigger screen for example. Mobiles have achieved appliance status. Who cares about fragmentation ? There is fragmentation in car models as well and fancy cars that have weird ways to switch on. After you master it, you run with it for years. You don't care if the car in the opposite traffic works differently. Fragmentation affects developers, who now have massive budgets to overcome it. There are hundreds of thousands of apps, most people use only a few and the rest they simply forget to delete after they are downloaded. So there are enough that work well out there.

Not to people want low priced phones; Large screen phones; Ones that take great Pictures; Lots of storage Phones; Robust Phones; Ones that double as Consoles; projectors; ebook readers; Remote Controls; Radio receivers and transmitters; Made in the USA rather than students and children. Marketing to local needs "Gold Clamshell" not a problem.

Android got to be 85% of the market by hitting every price point, and hardware need geared toward that market, most users never think of tinkering...its kind of weird y

Don't underestimate the popularity of customization apps. Look at the install numbers for popular launchers (home screen replacements), for example. One app, Smart Launcher, has millions of installs. Replacement keyboards are doing even better.

People have always enjoyed customizing their phones. Originally you could only do ringtones and wallpaper (remember when iOS got customizable wallpaper? LOL), but Android has really opened up a lot of new things for users to play with.

I'm well aware of that famous TED talk where the presented talked about the paradox of choice (http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html), and it does have some merit. But the way I see it, appealing to the masses means that those who don't fit the mold are generally left in the dust because it's not "economically viable" to cater to them. Keeping things open and keeping choice available means that there's something for everyone.

Choice requires a greater level of personal responsibility. You can't (and shouldn't) rely on some corporation to make all your decisions for you without being able to change them if they aren't suitable for you. It might be easier to just go with a monoculture of decision-making, but you'll pay for it once you realize that you aren't like everyone else.

Everything should be as customizable as possible. That doesn't mean that the config menu needs to be complicated, it only means there needs to be a normal settings menu (sufficient for 90% of the users) and a "pro" menu with all the other settings. Firefox (among some others probably) has this worked out perfectly. The settings in the normal options are sufficient for most users. Power users can use about:config to change other stuff. That it's not usable for 90% of the users doesn't matter. They don't nee

The reason I switched from iOS was because personally, I *want* control over my smartphone. I want the options and customisations, and the ability to decide what keyboard to use and where my music sits. My advice to those who can't handle a few options is "get an iPhone".

Though really, I can't see why both user groups can't be catered for - have sensible defaults and basic options, and put everything else inside an "Advanced settings" button somewhere - no one is forced to tap it.

That's exactly how it is right now; You need never, ever look at Android settings if you don't want to. Stock launcher, SMS app, ring tones, screen behaviour, look and feel of the UI... They're all perfectly functional. In fact, the only usability difference I see between IOS and stock Android UI is that Apple put the icons on the home screen, whereas Android makes use of a launcher icon to bring up the list. Like it to be like an IOS UI? Put shortcuts to every app on the home screens; You can scroll throug

I agree that there is simply too much "crap" in the Android markets all over. The amount of good, quality, useful stuff is a seemingly small ratio of what's out there. But I get by just fine and enjoy a good quality experience. How?

Just like with Windows computers and the like, you simply have to limit what you do with your machines. Limit the resource consumption. Limit the amount of apps you run. Limit tweaks and [animated] wallpapers and all that junk. Do the things which are useful and stop trying to entertain yourself with a new toy every 10 minutes. I take advantage of the fact that people out there are dumb enough to try every app available. I get to read reviews and comments to assist in the choices I make. Good for me, bad for them when things don't work out.

Maturity is required. The market of available crap is not to blame for consumer behavior. (This statement is in sharp contrast to my position on the food we have available to us in the US... the market *IS* to blame and especially when they fight consumer choice and knowledge by preventing information from being available to consumers so they can make their own decisions.) The users are making all the choices... and they always will.

Make good, informed choices. Give favor to software makers with good reputations. It's not that hard.

I know of nobody who has ditched a PC for a tablet and can count on one hand the number of people who have swapped their PC for a Mac - I can probably count on two hands the number of people who are trying Linux alongside Windows or have ditched Windows for Linux. Still not a lot but more than those converted to Mac.

Only an elite few spend top dollar on desktop PCs or Macs - for most people "cheap and cheerful" is good enough, and they're never

Good point AC, I would think these website or even hard-copy publishers would dive in to the vast range of possibilities given in Linux to make these comparisons (hopefully in an unbiased manner) and show viewers the features, differences, advantages or deterrents of each of the distributions and their variants. If the word got out, they should have a good amount of traffic on their websites.

What? Their definition of 'Must-Have' is rediculous. You must be able to apply textures to your photos? You must be able to browse KickStarter without using their website? You must play Plants v Zombies 2? You must have information regarding airport lounges?

Maybe these specific apps aren't available on Android, but suitable alternatives certainly are for most of them. I have absolutely no use for most of these, so I don't know, for example, the best Android twitter app or photo manipulation app. Cool Reader

Most of the Android fans that I've bumped into choose their device in exactly the same manner as iOS fans: they choose whatever is in fashion at the moment. They also deal with downloading apps in the same fashion as iOS fans: they choose whatever their friends are raving about. They also have a handy way to deal with customization: they usually leave the device as it shipped (perhaps changing wallpapers along the way).

Choice is not making people unhappy, because they usually made up their minds before they ever went shopping.

Most of the Android fans that I've bumped into choose their device in exactly the same manner as iOS fans; they choose whatever is in fashion at the moment

Except most people aren't fans(sic) they are consumers, and they are choosing their devices based on a variety of reasons, based on obvious things like screen size and price...as well as less obvious things like a rugged device. Samsung may be the most popular of Android...it got there with crazy nice phones. We all like to joke Apple is just a brand...but they built creating incredible mind-share and media support by being early with great product, the fact that is expensive and behind has cost them a larg

So random blogger posts that there's a fundamental problem with giving consumers choice. Yeah year by year Android gains more marketshare at a higher rate than any other platform.

His examples are comical too. I actually know someone who setup their phone with every app the same on the one screen. That way when the kid picks it up he ends up opening Angry Birds just by pressing randomly on the screen. The image sharing example? Actually that doesn't happen. When an image is received it goes into a pre-determined folder. What the user appears to have done is clicked "Share" or tried to perform some other file operation in which case choice is exactly what he wants.

But hey this guy is an "expert" who's had positions in user experience and product design.... at AOL and Yahoo!...

On the one hand there are advocates who want it to be used by as many people - ordinary people who neither know nor care about "open" software - as possible. On the other hand, the whole product line is completely dependent on people writing code, who's primary motivation is to show to their peers how clever they are.

Sadly these two groups have little in common. Users don't care about options, flexibility, "free" (of either variety), choice, source code or customising

On the one hand there are advocates who want it to be used by as many people - ordinary people who neither know nor care about "open" software - as possible.

Except that is not even remotely true...Although I am not sure of the relevance to this choice. Ignoring your offensive comments. Its interesting no note...suddenly everybody...those ordinary people(sic) are suddenly concerned about "open" they don't use those words, they use words like "privacy" and "human rights" and "government" and "company" "abuses". We don't talk about open source here because we are clever we are just good at this...I personally would struggle with brain surgery....hell I struggle ma

Cars that can go straight, to the left and to the right, that can go at different speeds, that have a reverse gear simply offer too much choices. Thousands of accidents per year are proof that we need simpler vehicles. Maybe a sofa, people rarely get into traffic accidents driving a sofa.

"Too much choice" might be a real argument in some contexts (such as Linux desktop) but certainly not in the world of Android phones.

Most people don't flash a custom ROM or change the launcher. Literally everyone I know just accepts (and grumbles about) whatever configuration the vendor burnt in at the factory. The more adventurous ones just possibly might create a custom wallpaper or ringtone but that's it.

Unbelievably some don't even know they can install apps, or do know but avoid doing so "in case I mes

Having too many choices in this case is not the same as having too much choice.

This sounds like nonsense but what it means is that I can look over a huge range of Android devices and immediately reject out of hand probably 95% of them. Too big, too small, wrong shape, wrong color, wrong brand, wrong OS version, wrong features, wrong ROM options, lack of aftermarket cases, etc. The pruning is fast and brutal and ends up with a couple of models on the short list and easily down to one for the final. I had no trouble at all picking my last Android phone and tablet.

So there's a lot of choice. But a lot of it is irrelevant, and thus has no meaning. Same as there are lots of car choices but if you want a specific type, you can eliminate nearly all the others. Most people do not put all the subcompact cars on the same list with pickup trucks, vans, big rigs, or motorbikes.

I had no trouble picking the last car I bought. First, I found out which models offered some specific features I wanted. ALL the others immediately dropped out of the running. Then it was price, and again the list pruned. Very quickly the list narrowed down to one model that met what I wanted and I ordered that car online without even test-driving it. Why bother when the pruning had already determined this car we the best option? And, I was right.

"Not to mention a UI that’s impossible to navigate." At least try a Nexus device rather than a Samsung one... You will see how easy to navigate to and nice is the real Android UI !

The Troll is Apple copied most of Androids OS functions with 7, catching up with many severely lacking features, although most people who have used one would be quite comfortable with the other. The real difference is the first party applications, and currently Google are simply the best.

Gnome still is the best (of some great) Desktops, and its choice of sensible defaults, and removing redundant controls are very sensible. What is wrong is Gnome shell. The bottom line is like Android this can be replaced with mate or Cinnamon, or Replaced entirely with KDE or XFCE, and that is something to be proud of...

when the manufacturers and carriers insist on reskinning and lockig down the system you do get difficult to navigate and use handsets that don't actually deliver Android.

Except vanilla Android is always a choice. In fact its interesting to notice that manufacturers are increasingly offering a "Dev" or Google Play edition, although you are exaggerating that reskinning Android makes it difficult to navigate, when in reality they often offer compelling features, not yet in stock android.

Agree with the locked down, but then if you don't want that...Android is your only choice, and you can choice a device that offers it.

A cheap product, from food to consumable goods to durable goods to electronics, will always win

Then you don't understand "cost" and "price" and users will pay for features that they need...and that includes brand. What they want is good value. Android currently offers phones hitting every "price" from low to high, as lower mark-ups and margins than competing products with a range of innovating features....its capitalism at its best.

Apple for instance produce a cheap Chinese phone at a high price! which is why outside countries that hide this through massive subsides. Its a failure.

What pisses customers off is when you've decided "I want a Samsung, it must have IM, YT, FB and cloud storage and at least 16GB of memory" and are then shown 30 colours, with/without LTE, 3G,EDGE,WiFi,... to choose from after they've already made their mind up KNOWING that the salesman cannot be relied upon to draw the correct for the customer conclusion about which one to buy, preferring instead to upsell to things that are either going to cost a shitload to use (e.g. "cloud storage plus") WITHOUT saying that they'll cost or are wasted money (EDGE in the USA) or WiFi when there are few free hotspots and the contract includes wireless data plans that make WiFi mostly redundant.

You are talking about the problems being the carriers/salesman, that does not change regardless of phone or operating system.